- Record Label: Alive Naturalsound Records
- Release Date: Nov 26, 2013
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Nov 26, 2013It's mellow in the canyon tonight, so lie on your back and stare at the stars, let the music wash over you and don't "stop paying attention to the things that used to make you shine."
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Nov 26, 2013These “lost” recordings are generally better than anything the band has done since.
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Nov 26, 2013The only mild complaint would be that some tracks feel a little too long (even for the genre) and sometimes a tad repetitive.
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Dec 13, 2013Desert Skies is a document of a band content with trying on various personae without pushing them into new and original areas.
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Nov 26, 2013The heavy chords of the album-opening title track are a surprising jolt, yet maintain the same breezy Laurel Canyon harmonies for which the band later became known.
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MojoDec 18, 2013While Desert Skies' fusion of '60s country-rock with '90s underground dynamics doesn't move ass deeply as 2001's sublime Once We Were Trees, its peaks prove Beachwood Sparks' early days are worth investigating. [Jan 2014, p.103]
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Nov 26, 2013All the core elements of Beachwood Sparks are here, but there’s also more, and less, at the same time.
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Nov 27, 2013They remain a surprisingly divisive band, with detractors accusing them of imitating rather than innovating. Desert Skies does absolutely nothing to answer that criticism, but it does provide a useful point against which to measure their later efforts.
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Jan 9, 2014It’s fascinating, in moments, to hear where the band started out, where it stumbled in frustration and where it wandered fruitfully, but too much of Desert Skies confirms for us what Rademaker highlights in the notes: the band was tired of rock music.
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Dec 3, 2013The album is so much more than a set of rough drafts of more considered compositions. These 1998 offerings succeed in their own right.
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UncutJan 15, 2014So far, so far out. [Feb 2014, p.89]